The US has always liked agression, the only sugestion that it is off putting has been from Fox news in the later debates in trying to scrape together something that looked like a silver lining to the base.
Though admittedly Republican agression has, at times in recent years, taken canidates into looney land, which *is* off putting.

Sadly for his relations with the rest of the world, he comes across as being as gaffe-prone as Dan Quayle. Worse, in fact. Never thought I'd ever hear myself say that.
There were so many better candidates for the Republican nomination - why on earth did they choose Romney?

Sad thing is, there weren't a lot of better candidates for the Republicans, other than Huntsman. Unfortunately Huntsman has the charisma and speaking ability of an elderly econ professor despite the fact that he is a very well qualified and capable politician and also has the sense to not tell a crowd of unemployed Floridians that he too is unemployed and can relate with them.

They definitely have a fine line for aggression. If you can be painted as a person out of control, you lose it all. I don't think either went that far though.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of aggressive presidents. I hope this stance on our leader goes with the dinosaurs. I don't need my president answering to false masculinity stereotypes by sacrificing intelligent discussion.

The US has always liked agression, the only sugestion that it is off putting has been from Fox news in the later debates in trying to scrape together something that looked like a silver lining to the base.
Though admittedly Republican agression has, at times in recent years, taken canidates into looney land, which *is* off putting.

I can't think of a single debate in memory or study that was won by aggressive behavior. Bush 1992, Gore 2000, Bush 2004, anything in 2012, etc. A good line has always been of value but not delivered in an aggressive tone or posture, etc. Presidential candidates who start to fight start looking less presidential and turn off voters, at least that's been the conventional wisdom.

I meant aggressive more as in the rude and snarky type of aggression. Not assertive and confident which is how he generally was viewed in the first debate.

I think that view shifts from channel to channel. Assertive is just a euphemism for rude, and confidence comes in the aftermath. Biden got love for his aggro stance in the VP debate, and I think Obama has been trying to fine tune an aggression for himself since then. Romney is better than Obama at the aggressive debating, but I agree with above that he used today as a feint. He came out moderate and Obama will be shown as being a jerk for pressing the attack. We will see how well it works.

I wonder if there is fear in the Romney campaign that agreeing with Obama so much could anger base voters who like Romney because of how far some of his stances are from Obama. I don't know if any indies have this same view on Romney, but that could be a problem as well. Of course, the Romney campaign has likely planned for such a thing.

I just heard Romney agree that Obama did a good job on foreign policy mostly, how many times did Romney say agree during the debate? He literally parroted Obama, while Romney was composed well, IMHO, he lost that debate.